The mooring of a water craft, for example a pleasure boat or a sailboat, is the final phase of a berthing maneuver. It consists in maintaining the water craft against a pontoon, for example, and attaching it to the pontoon in order to limit the motions of the water craft relative to the pontoon.
A known technique, illustrated in FIG. 1, consists in tying the water craft (not shown) to a pontoon C by using a rope B and one or more mooring points A which can take the form of a cleat, a bollard or a ring. The number of mooring points depends on the size of the water craft.
One drawback of this approach is that it requires the presence of one or more persons. In addition, since the water craft is subjected to the movements of the water (swells), such a mooring maneuver has risks for the individuals present. Besides, such mooring can be insecure if there is a relatively high risk of theft of the water craft.
To overcome some of these drawbacks, the patent application WO2009/073897 proposes the use of a locking mechanism which corresponds to a vertical bar fixedly attached to a pontoon, and placed between the guiding elements of the bow of a boat having a general V-shape. A hook situated on the bow of the boat is used to grip the vertical bar so as to irreversibly moor the water craft to the pontoon.
Besides, the pontoon has a hinge which enables a locking mechanism to follow the movements of the water (due to the tide and/or the water swell).
This approach uses numerous mechanical parts which make manufacture complicated and costly, and greatly increases the risks of dysfunction.
There is therefore a major need for improving water craft mooring devices to optimize security, manufacturing costs and maintenance in a simple and effective way.